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MASS Program - Library Literacy: Search Tools

This guide is for MASS students, to help them improve their information and library literacy in order to successfully pursue a taught master's course in social sciences

PowerSearch for Books

For books only, un-tick the Articles+ box. Library Catalog searches books.

   

Examples

1. Nettle, D. (2007). Personality : What makes you the way you are. Oxford ; Hong Kong: Oxford University Press.

2. Wei, Y., & Liefner, I. (2012). Globalization, industrial restructuring, and regional development in China. Applied Geography, 32(1), 102-105.

  • Search the authors (Wei and Liefner) or Nettle, D. to look for similar items
    • Use the "details" section to find more by authors or subjects
  • search for key-words, or title words

When is it OK to use a generative tool (AI)?

Check & Cross-check the Results

A common problem with many generative AI text tools is that they generate nonsense, especially made-up citations (references).

So, if you are using texts that you created using ChatGPT or other AI tools, use your eyes and your brain to check the work. Evaluate the information provided, just like anything you plan to use academically. More info on how to evaluate below:

1. Cross-check what it says & do "lateral reading"

  • Check against your own knowledge
  • Check against Wikipedia or Britannica
  • See if other reliable sources state the same thing
  • This is not new with generative AI, it's always been good scholarly practice

To learn more about lateral reading,  watch:

2. Confirm that any references it provides are real

3. If the references (citations) are real, check that they support the claim

  • This is *NOT* a new issue with AI tools, it's always been important to do so.
  • This is proper scholarly practice when working with sources both in print and online.

4. If you use ChatGPT or other AI tools in your work, you need to acknowledge it.

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Some of this content was based on the work of Amy Scheelke of Salt Lake Community College, her LibGuide: https://libguides.slcc.edu/ChatGPT/InformationLiteracy

PowerSearch for Books & Articles

For articles  and books  tick both the Library Catalog box and the Articles+ box

 

Journal Article Databases

Some Useful Social Sciences Article Databases

What if an article is not available in the Library?.

 

Newspaper Databases

Research Help AI Tools

Scite  - HKUST subscribes to Scite, which  can help you find & evaluate articles. It has a sub-section,Scite Assistant, (in beta) that allows you to ask questions, which are answered with generated text and embedded reference, with the references md  links on the right.

Elicit -  Helps do research reviews. Type in a research topic and on the left it will give you references and on the right, summaries of the abstract. Links to papers via DOI and via Semantic Scholar.  Built by a non-profit company, Ought, based in California and Delaware in the USA. No direct links to full-text.

Consensus -  Helps to do research reviews. Type in a research topic and it provides a list of one-sentence summaries of research articles. Links to papers via semantic scholar.  Possible to click through semantic scholar to get to full-text of subscribed things if you are ON campus (e.g. I was able to access an Elsevier article on campus). Company appears to be a partner of Semantic Scholar.

ChatPDF - Summarizes pdfs for you -  how, who owns it? Not clear.

Semantic Reader - An AI-powered augmented scientific reading application available in Semantic Scholar. Features include automatic highlighted overlays to key information on a paper and citation cards that show details of a cited paper in-line where you're reading. Note that the Reader is not available for all papers but it works on most arXiv papers.

 

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